10. Criteria for a Constitution part 2: Concepts
1. Principles (ethics)
A constitution begins by asserting fundamental, organising principles or ideals. Typically, as a minmum, it recognises the inalienable rights of the individual against the abuse of power; guarantees citizenship, the vote and the right of abode. The principles in some constitutions are enshrined in a motto such as “Liberté, egalité, fraternité” – and laicité. In France these principles are written into the opening line of the constitution as they have an impact on all that follows.
If the United Kingdom has founding principles, no one seems to know what they are. In his first speech as king, Charles III swore to uphold the “principles of the constitution” but he didn’t specify what they were.
There is no official list. “Nowhere,” says Gordon Brown’s Labour party steering committee, “in UK law are these objectives and thus the purpose of the UK central state made explicit, or set down clearly: instead they have to be deduced from how the UK operates.”(which is surely the wrong way around).
Peter Hennessy has remarked that British people don’t “hold any truths to be self-evident”.
Are the tenets of Christianity part of the constitution of a country with a state religion? The king is the head of the Church of England and Sir Keir Starmer maintained in an interview in September 2025 that Christianity is “wired into our informal constitution”. Is the state, therefore, signed up to such principles as “thou shalt not kill” and “love thy enemy”?
2. Comprehensiveness, coherence and clarity.
Constitution writers strive to make their instruments as comprehensive, coherent and clear as possible. Every law must be as watertight as possible, if it is to be workable. It has to be pedantic, proscriptive and prescriptive.
No constitution is perfect, of course, and omissions are made that have to be filled through improvisation and the fabrication of conventions. What distinguishes the British Constitution is that its lack of explicit precision.
It is fragmented and variegated rather than comprehensive. It has gaping holes in which are left up to political actors to fill on the basis of convention and more often, precedence – which means repetition of the botches of the past.
Often not even the experts can say what it says and they point out its deafening silences. It has no guidance to give on the subject of referendums and how they are compatible with the work of MPs, as Peter Hennessy laments: “It’s very difficult to reconcile the two. Plebiscitary democracy is primary colours… many would say oversimplified and [it] doesn’t sit well with the deliberative processes or representative democracy; so its jagged, it makes us neuralgic, it makes it uneasy..”
3. Accessibility and intelligibility
A constitution must be accessible and open to consultation by, and intelligible to, everyone affected by it, from the child who has just learned to read to the oldest citizen. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, except where it is difficult or impossible to know what the law says.
How can the ordinary citizen consult the British constitution when even its form and location are difficult to understand? To decipher much of it takes at least a university law or politics degree. It could not be more out of reach to the ordinary voter.
4. Sovereignty
A constitution locates sovereignty unambiguously. In France, for instance, it lies with the people, as it must in a democracy. In the UK, who knows? An argument over sovereignty raged from 2016 to 2019 and all that can be said on the subject is that a prime minister who controls parliament and keep his own government together can do what he wants in the monarch’s name.
5. Inalienable Rights in return for responsibilities (duties)
The raison d’etre of every democratic constitution is to acknowledge citizens’ “right to have rights” as Hannah Arendt put it. Cooley considers these rights as existing before the introduction of the constitution.
Rights are part of the balancing function of the constitution. In return for obligations, whether legal (paying taxes; military service) or moral (voting) the individual must at least have the inalienable right of abode and freedom from state tyranny, if not the right to have any faith or none, and the right to seek happiness.
Barendt considers this a deal-breaker: “a constitutional text without legally enforceable guarantees of citizens’ freedoms and a proper balance or separation of powers scarcely merits the description of a constitution.” He makes my point for me.
No one in the UK has an inalienable right to anything – except the monarch. The people can only vote by grace of Parliament which can vote on any restriction of liberty it likes. A minister (usually an elected politician but conceivably a peer who no one has voted for) can deny someone a passport or deprive them of their citizenship “in the interests of national security”.
The common law and habeas corpus are often cited as core rights that British citizen-subjects possess. Both are subject to the whim, of Parliament. The seven Habeas Corpus Suspension Acts passed between 1688 and 1817, demonstrate that any “right” can be revoked by an angry House of Commons. Anti-terrorism legislation, such as the introduction of internment in Northern Ireland, is a modern form of the suspension of habeas corpus. Neither habeas corpus nor any other right is enshrined in the constitution.
The Cavalier Constitution 